BRANDING & WEB DESIGN: emery street, inc.
Starting in April 2016 and continuing to the present, I’ve provided freelance graphic design, branding, copy writing, web development and content management for Emery Street, Inc, a consulting service in the Global Garment Industry. Susan Abplanalp, founder and CEO, brings to her clients years of expertise in garment design, sustainable fashion, pattern-making and textile development.
Cue the montage music from every clichéd movie makeover scene: the website is currently under construction as we polish it up from its 2016 origins to a look, feel, and interactive design befitting 2022. Read on to learn about my process in logo and web design.
Logo Design
My first task was to create a modern, legible redesign of Emery Street’s existing logo. I met with the client to understand her needs and wants for the new logo (a modern vector-based look), and which elements she wanted to keep (wave textures, color scheme, general sizing and placement of elements). We met multiple times for feedback and revisions until the client was happy with the new logo.
On the left is the original logo; on the right is my redesign. Click here to see my process manual.
original logo
my redesign
web Design
Once the new logo was designed, the client asked for a proper website to be built from scratch. The website would need to serve dual purposes: as a portfolio of the founder’s professional experiences (working at private businesses and serving as professor/instructor at undergraduate institutions) and a directory of services provided by Emery Street, Inc. The unique functions of this website provided an excellent design challenge: organizing a lot of information that a variety of intended visitors (students, colleagues, clients, educational institutions, business leaders) would find clear and engaging.
Through initial conversations with the client, we gathered inspiration, reviewed the content for the website, and worked together to decide general content organization. I did not need to code directly because I built the website using Wix. Nevertheless, my (at the time) limited web design and user interface design experience still benefited the project. I worked faster in Wix than someone with zero experience. It was easier for me to troubleshoot issues with font choices, color schemes, and Wix’s automatic — read: imperfect — translation of the desktop design to the responsive mobile view.
This project has provided me (and still does) with invaluable development of the incredibly important (yet rarely mentioned) skills that a designer needs for success - asset library organization, time management, and the nuanced communication of graphic and web design ideas to non graphic or web designers. I learned how to express my opinions, recommendations, and reasoning to the client, to explain principals of design in an approachable way, and to practice open communication and patience against tight deadlines and out-of-the-blue issues.